The present invention relates to medical image-based guidance of cardiac arrhythmia therapies, and more particularly to guidance of electrophysiological interventions using interventional medical images and a personalized computational cardiac electrophysiology model.
Ablation procedures for cardiac arrhythmias have proven to be successful for a large variety of cardiac electrophysiology troubles. Atrial fibrillation (Afib), ventricular tachycardia (VT), and ventricular fibrillation (VF), for example, can be treated, or at least controlled, in several classes of patients. The general idea behind ablation therapy is to destroy the cells that trigger the arrhythmias. These cells can be ectopic, i.e., they trigger uncontrolled electrical signals spontaneously, or exits points of slow conducting pathways that can be found, for example, around or within myocardium scars. The success of the ablation therapy relies on the ability of the electrophysiologist to identify the arrhythmogenic regions. While Afib ablation has become systematic in most patients, finding the regions to ablate in post myocardium infarction (MI) patients is extremely challenging due to the variability in scar geometry and local tissue substrate. Current practice is still lacking of a systematic clinical strategy, which may explain the rather unsatisfactory success rate of ablation therapies for VT (from 50% to 90%).